It’s not in LA or New York: This is the tiny playground basketball court where Kobe Bryant started playing
Here’s where it all began for Kobe, one of the legends of the NBA.
I can guarantee you that Kobe Bryant’s basketball origins do not match up with how you imagine. Try to imagine it... do you have a New York street corner or an LA suburb in mind? Well you’d be wrong.
Instead, think of a quaint Italian village square. Yes, really.
Walk - or cycle - around the narrow cobbled streets of Reggio Emilia in northern Italy, just between Parma and Bologna, and you’ll likely not even notice a tiny playground with basketball hoops coming out from the walls.
It’s a worn-down surface and the fence sways a little loud when the wind gets going, but it’s lovely. The coffee is as strong as it is cheap and the food is just as sensational as you’d imagine.
Believe it or not, this is where NBA legend Kobe Bryant first found his love of basketball, taking his first steps to becoming one of the greatest players ever to play the game.
Kobe actually spent many of his early years in Italy, as his father Joe decided to move to Europe in search of a team after leaving the Houston Rockets in 1983.
Kobe developed his competitive spirit in Italy
Kobe would spend “endless afternoons” practicing next to the church that backs onto the tiny court, with the local priest giving him permission to do so.
In the first episode of the new documentary, “Kobe: The Making of a Legend”, former teammate Marco Ferraroni explains how the pair met in Italy and played together at the local youth team for two years, with Kobe moving up to play with boys a year older as he was already too good for his age category.
“We spent hours and hours there. One of my memories of Kobe is that he was always there,” Ferraroni recalled. “I remember that Kobe was always available to play basketball, even for 1v1, just spending all afternoon playing 1v1 or a three-point competition. He was always there for basketball.”
“I remember one day: we played all afternoon and it was very difficult to leave because Kobe didn’t want to leave having lost the last game – I was one year older, and it happened that sometimes he lost. And it was like: ‘No, no, no, play one more, play one more. I want to win. Play one more.’ So it was kind of a never-ending afternoon playing with him.”
While Kobe would move on to greater things, becoming one of the greatest players ever in the NBA and a human being loved by everyone on Earth, he never forgot his roots in Italy and stayed in contact with the friends he made there. After his tragic death in 2020, a plaza in the city was named in his honour and his daughter Gianna as the tight-knit community came together to mourn the death of their legend.
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